Abraham Woodhull

Abraham Woodhull (7 October 1750-23 January 1826) was the leader of the Culper Ring network under the alias Samuel Culper, Sr. during the American Revolutionary War. Woodhull, the son of the loyalist magistrate Richard Woodhull, decided to volunteer his services to the Continental Army as the leader of a spy ring in New York City after 1777, assisting George Washington in collecting information on the British Army's activities.

Early life
Abraham Woodhull was born on 7 October 1750 in Setauket, New York, the son of Judge Richard Woodhull and Mary Smith. Woodhull was secretly engaged to Anna Strong in 1773 before his brother Thomas, a soldier in the British Army, was killed while quelling a protest at King's College and his father decided to marry him to his brother's fiancee Mary, leading to Abraham and Anna parting. Abraham enlisted in a Suffolk County militia in the fall of 1775, but he resigned after a few months; his cousin Brigadier-General Nathaniel Woodhull was killed by the British while in their prison on 20 September 1776, when he was killed with bayonets. He attempted to stay out of the war, and he smuggled cabbage for his family after their harvest in the autumn of 1776 proved to be insufficient due to maggots eating up his crops.

Involvement with Brewster
Woodhull encountered his childhood friend Caleb Brewster when he arrived in Connecticut, selling him his cabbage in exchange for some money and some silk. However, his rowboat was pulled in by a ship at night while he was headed for New York, and he was told that he was being arrested by the Continental Congress for smuggling. Woodhull refused to give any names to the Congress, and he found out that his interrogator was Benjamin Tallmadge, another childhood friend who had joined a regiment of Connecticut dragoons in the Continental Army. Tallmadge told Woodhull that George Washington wanted him to work with the patriots as a spy during the American Revolutionary War, and he refused. However, because his friend Selah Strong was imprisoned after getting into a fight with British officer Charles Joyce with Woodhull in attendance, Woodhull was one of the suspects in Joyce's murder when he turned up dead with his throat slit in Lewis Field, as was Anna Strong, Selah's wife and Woodhull's former fiancee. Woodhull's father helped him in getting his way out of the case, and Woodhull and ranger captain Robert Rogers both investigated the murder. Eventually, Rogers lured out the killer by playing the retreat signal on the drums, which is what the killer used to signal Joyce to have a tryst with them, as revealed in a letter that Anna Strong had found in Joyce's belongings in his room in her house. The killer was discovered to be loyalist John Robeson, and Rogers decided to use a dead redcoat as a scapegoat while employing Robeson as his eyes and ears in Setauket.

Woodhull became involved in the revolution around the same time, with Anna convincing him that he should side with the patriots against the British. Woodhull told Anna to raise a black petticoat on her clothing line to signal Tallmadge's courier, and it turned out to be Caleb Brewster. Brewster told Woodhull that his encounter with him in Connecticut was the first part of the test to see if Woodhull was fit to join the patriots, and Tallmadge's interrogation was the second part of the test. Woodhull passed on information that he had learned from his father's meeting with Major Edmund Hewlett to discuss the exoneration of Abraham from his role as a murder suspect; he had found a letter with a coded message that stated that the British under John Graves Simcoe would raid a patriot safehouse in Meigs Harbor, Connecticut. Woodhull told Brewster about the plans, and Brewster passed the information on to Tallmadge, leading to Tallmadge, Brewster, and other Continental troops ambushing and killing 19 of the 20 British troops, capturing a wounded Simcoe. His role in the ambush led to him being involved in the revolutioanry cause, although he only did it because Simcoe had been harassing Anna Strong while was quartered at her house.

Heading to New York
Later in 1776, Richard Woodhull asked his son to come with him to test his bartering skills for a deal with Colonel Jonathan Cook, the head of the commissary in New York City. Abraham negotiated that his father could sell his hogs for 7 pounds each, saying that Cook could make an extra profit by giving the quartermaster the required 20 hogs and some more hogs to other merchants, which would benefit Cook. These negotiations made Woodhull proud of his son, but Abraham was disappointed when his father and Colonel Cook began to discuss dividing Selah Strong's lands while he was in prison, with Colonel Cook being promised some cauliflower by Woodhull. This led to Abraham being disappointed with his father, whose loyalist sympathies set the two of them apart.

Later that day, Abraham decided to head to King's College to visit the spot where his brother had been killed in a 1773 riot after Woodhull put a Phrygian cap on top of the Liberty Pole there. While there, he had a conversation with two Hessians making sauerkraut at their campfire, and they let him try their food. Woodhull offered to send some cabbage to them, but they said that their brigade was being shipped out for Trenton, New Jersey soon. Now, he knew that 1,500 Hessian troops were going to be sent to Trenton, and he decided to pass this on to Caleb. Abraham decided to help Caleb in escaping New York after their meeting, and Caleb was able to escape on a rowboat as Abraham and Anna distracted British guards by offering them some beer from the Strong tavern. Caleb escaped, and Abraham decided to continue passing information to the patriots.